


In The Evening

by MaeveBran



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-25
Updated: 2014-04-25
Packaged: 2018-01-20 18:00:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1520033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaeveBran/pseuds/MaeveBran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve brings Peggy up to date about the events of the movie before saying good by to find the Winter Soldier.  Sharon finally lets Steve know just who she is.</p><p>This is post Captain America: The Winter Soldier and full of Spoilers. Don't read if you haven't seen the movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The Evening

Captain Steven G. Rogers looked down at the woman in the portable hospital bed in front of him. He wondered if the rank that had been so much a part of who he was for the better part of the last century was still his to claim. SHIELD was no more and he was uncertain if the Army would still claim him, but he guessed the country would still need Captain America to fight against Hydra. It was the reason he was created in the first place. He still had a duty to fulfill.

“I'm sorry, Peggy,” Steve said as he sat in the visitor's chair facing her.

“I'm not,” Peggy Carter said. She may be in her nineties and fighting dementia, but today was one of her good days. “I made them hook the internet to my television and I read about what you did. Hydra had to be stopped.”

“But I took down SHIELD with it,” he protested. “All the work you, Howard, and Col. Phillips did and I destroyed it.”

“Our finest work still lives on,” she said as she reached a hand to cup his cheek. “You are our finest work. As long as you are the good man Dr. Erskine believed you to be, our work will not fail. We only fail if you turn your back on the fight for good.”

“I'll try to live up to that,” Steve blushed. 

“You didn't come over here to apologize for doing what needed to be done,” Peggy said. “Out with it.”

“There was a man Hydra sent after Agent Romanov and me,” he said. “Have you ever heard of the Winter Soldier?”

“The Russian Boogeyman?” Peggy asked. 

“That's the one,” he confirmed.

“Just rumors and ghost stories,” she said. “He's real?”

“Not just real,” he admitted. “He's Bucky.”

“The Hell you say,” Peggy protested.

“Natasha used some of her contacts in Kiev and got me his file,” he said. “It wasn't very cheerful reading.”

“Tell me,” she demanded.

“After I let him fall...” Steve started to explain.

“Steve, you did not let him fall,” she interrupted. “I thought we had this conversation, seventy years ago. Bucky made his choice. You did all you could do. You will remember that.”

“Ma'am, yes, Ma'am,” Steve said with a salute. “Anyway, after Bucky fell, Hydra saved him. This part is a little unclear, but it seems about the time I was crashing into the Arctic, Zola was escaping back to Germany and Hydra. There he supervised the brainwashing of Bucky along with the manufacturing of a mechanical arm.”

“Zola did escape when were transporting him after you went down,” she confirmed.

“Well for the next seventy years, whenever Hydra needed their fist, they would thaw Bucky out and send him on missions,” Steve explained.

“What do you mean 'thaw him out'?” she asked.

“Apparently, they kept him in some kind of cryogenic freeze between missions,” Steve said, as silent tears trickled down his cheeks. “That's not the worst part.”

“Tell me,” Peggy demanded as she squeezed Steve's hand, tears rolled down her cheeks as well. She hadn't know Bucky well, but he had been a friend and a part of the Howling Commandos and they had been under her command.

“Any time his memories of the life before Hydra surfaced, they'd take him to a machine and wipe his memories,” he said. “We were fighting, hand to hand, and he looked right in my eyes and there was no recognition. When I said I was his friend he told me I was his mission. His mission. To kill me and he couldn't remember.”

“Where is he now?” she asked.

“I don't know,” he said. “But I'm going to find him.”

“You will, I know it,” Peggy said. “And when you do, you'll make him remember.”

“You can't be certain of that,” Steve said.

“But I can,” she replied.

“How?” he asked.

“Because they had to repeatedly wipe his memories means they were still there and would surface,” Peggy explained. “If the memory wipe worked permanently they would have only had to do it once.”

Steve looked at her hopefully. “You're the first one to give me hope.”

Peggy let that hope sink in for a moment before changing the topic under discussion.

“Last time you were here, you were complaining that Agent Romanov was trying to set you up on dates,” Peggy said.

“She still is,” Steve replied. “Her latest is my neighbor and it turns out a SHIELD Agent, a woman named Sharon.”

“You rang?” Sharon said as she walked into the room.

“You!” Steve exclaimed in surprise as Sharon walked over to Peggy and kissed her cheek.

“You're looking good, Aunt Peggy,” Sharon said as she straightened up to face Steve. “Captain Rogers, we haven't been officially introduced. I'm Sharon Carter, Peggy is my great Aunt.”

Sharon extended her hand to Steve. Steve shook it. “Steve Rogers,” he said.

“I know,” Sharon said.

“I'll go and leave you two to your visit,” Steve said as he moved to go.

“You find Bucky and bring him back,” Peggy said as she squeezed his hand one last time.

“I will,” Steve promised as he bent and kissed her cheek. “You'll always be my best gal.”

Steve nodded at Sharon as he walked out of the room.

 

“Captain Rogers,” Sharon called after him as he walked down the hall to the front door.

Steve stopped and turned around. “What is it Agent Carter?”

“Just Sharon will do,” she said as she walked closer to him. “I know you're going after the Winter Soldier, so I copied everything I could find on the mainframes at what was left of the Triskelion during the clean up.” She hands him a flash drive that is not dissimilar to the one Natasha used on the Lemurian Star.

“Thank you,” he said as he took the drive.

“Deputy Director Hill suggested you might find it useful,” Sharon said. “Good luck.”

She disappeared back into her Aunt's room as Steve studied the flash drive in his hand. He might not have an agency to work for anymore but he certainly had a mission- retrieve the Winter Soldier and get back at least one member of his barber shop quartet.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the song "Time After Time" (the one Frank Sinatra recorded in 1947 not the Cindy Lauper one) the link is to the version recorded by Rod Stewart because it has the verse lyrics http://www.metrolyrics.com/time-after-time-lyrics-rod-stewart.html (The whole song puts me in a Steve/Peggy mood)


End file.
